Everything Tesla has done has been done before. Musk is just awesome at self promotion - and he has to be. Because otherwise people will stop giving him money every time Tesla runs short of money.

See, Tesla is incapable of sustaining itself by its own revenues and cash flows. Every quarter it blows through a half a billion dollars just in operations: advertising, salaries, utilities, materials, paying suppliers (no, Tesla is NOT 100% vertically integrated.), other day to day operating expenses and Musk's private jet - you are not naïve enough to think that he pays for that out of his own pocket, are you?

That money is gone. Spent. Forever.

Another half a billion dollars a quarter is spent on capex - plant and equipment for his grandiose building plans.

So, he has to get money from Peter to pay Paul. He tapped out the banks, the equity is so diluted that in a rational market it should sell for $0.25 a share so, he is selling junk bonds.

Eventually, people will smarten up and stop dumping cash into the bottomless pit known as Tesla. It will go bust, The stock and bond holders will lose everything, and people who know what they are doing will buy up Tesla's assets for pennies on the dollar and make it viable - a la Iridium.

This hero worship of Musk was created by his publicists - he's PT Barnum on steroids. Or maybe Richard Branson on steroids.

Whatever - you Tesla/Musk fanboys are really religious fanatics.

So, stick your fingers in your ears and scream "Lalalalalaallala He's an innovative geeeenyus! lalalalalallalalalalalalla He gets things done! alalalalallalalalalalalala" just like the Creationists do about evolution and the denialists do about Global Warming.

Near perfect description, well done. Its like he looked at lots of very old cool ideas and said 'I wonder if its time to throw ridiculous amounts of cash at these things and try them again.' I have never been impressed by any so called innovation, but he sure can get the cash rolling in and some people do seem to worship him.

Is his private jet really financed trough Tesla? Maybe SpaceX? Or maybe his pocket money? I agree that Tesla looks like a pyramid. He manage to sell Tesla shares big time. I also think that his distortion field is much less ugly than this of the other dead guy. It may be however that his project (in this case electric cars) is just an initial push that fails and succeeds later on as most of huge infrastructure projects were. The only thing that annoys the hell out of me is the subsidies that I as a tax paye

Dude, he got a loan for Tesla which he paid back already. The tax subsidies are given to the purchaser, not Tesla, there is something else which is Californian emissions offsets credits and things like that. But this is a California specific issue. Not an US issue.

Everything Tesla has done has been done before. Musk is just awesome at self promotion

And this is precisely what innovation really is.

We have this idealized notion that invention / innovation is some guy who has a lightbulb moment. The truth is, the idea is the easy part. What's hard is execution, and promotion.

When the Wright Brothers came along, lots of people had "ideas" about how to fly. Many of them, such as Curtis, had better ideas than the Wright Brothers. But the Wrights were better at promotion, and got their name out there first. And that's why we all say they invented powered flig

Not really. Look at SpaceX. Know any other VTVL orbital rocket launcher? Nope. Because it's the first in history. Know any other orbital launcher which can LAND on a barge in the middle of the ocean? Nope.

As for the Tesla models, most of the innovation is in the battery pack and the charging facilities. There's also some innovation in the aluminum chassis construction and the design with a low drag coefficient, but yeah, most of it was already done. As for bleeding money, would you rather bleed your money o

Not Tesla, but a definite resounding yes to SpaceX. Reusable rockets delivered faster and cheaper than any company or government in history. Musk is a bit of a showboat, sure, but that comes with the package and is liveable. He's also a visionary and willing to put his own reputation and money on the line. SpaceX is a resounding success story, and looks to be on track for even more.

What part of Elon Musk's work is actually innovation and which parts are merely technological improvements and refinements or the instantiation of old science fiction novels? Near as I can tell, SpaceX isn't doing anything that hasn't been extensively discussed and even attempted in the past. Learning from other people's mistakes (even Heinlein's) scarcely counts as innovation. Moore's Law is nice, but NOT innovative.

Let me clarify that I am NOT against space flight, though I do think that some of its advoc

Yeah, I think Musk gets the prize not for innovation, but for actually going out and doing all those things I've always dreamed about doing when I was a kid... building the car from Night Rider, flying my friends through space with some Voltron-like gizmos, making vacuum-evacuated trains... you know, all those things featured by those Neil Ardley books visualizing the future in the 70s, before we took a 40-year break to... make the internet a mainstream thing.

Yeah, I think Musk gets the prize not for innovation, but for actually going out and doing all those things I've always dreamed about doing when I was a kid... building the car from Night Rider, flying my friends through space with some Voltron-like gizmos, making vacuum-evacuated trains... you know, all those things featured by those Neil Ardley books visualizing the future in the 70s, before we took a 40-year break to... make the internet a mainstream thing.

What exactly do you think innovation is? The definition of innovate is to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products. That is literally what you described. Terrifying to think you had ANYTHING to do with the Internet if you don't understand basic language logic.

When I was around four, I had this little tin toy airplane. I remember one time bragging that I was going to make it into a real remote control aircraft that could really fly and, waving it around in every direction, I said "I'm going to make it go this way, and this way, and this way, and this way".

Today we really do have drone toy aircraft that can fly any direction. Who innovated? Was it me forty years ago with that silly little tin toy waving it around saying I was going to make go those directions, or was it the people who then went and did it?

I have nothing against science fiction writers, they have an important role. But an idea in a science fiction novel is not innovation. It's the equivalent of me at four saying all the things I wish I could do. Innovation is turning dream into reality. And saying, well, Apollo put over a hundred tons into orbit in the 70's, so Falcon Heavy doing it today then landing the boosters back on the ground is just incremental. No it's fekking not, it's a bloody miracle. Did you watch those two boosters land - synchronized swimmers aren't as choreographed and beautiful as that.

merely technological improvements and refinements

Not to belittle the rocket science achievements, but the actual rocket science SpaceX has done is less than half of SpaceX's innovation. Musk took rocket science and mixed it with business science and economics to come up with a whole new way of doing space flight. He looked at the raw materials that went into a rocket and, realizing that they are two order of magnitudes cheaper than the finished product, said ok, there is zero reason this should cost the national budget of one of the smaller G8 nations to do it. He was laughed at as being hopelessly naive. NASA openly derided him in the beginning. But he was and is right. SpaceX accomplished feats of engineering landing those boosters. They are on the curve to have real SSTO with a spacecraft that is honest-to-goodness refuel-and-relaunch type reusable and give two hours New York to Tokyo at current airfare prices at the same time.

I'll go one step further.Real science fiction is about the impact on society of an invention, a paradigm. It's a tool to make you think about the pitfalls hiding behind a simple "improvement".

Whoever equates a writer's gimmick to an actual real-world commodity lives in a fantasy world where they can effortlessly create a magus opus without blood, toil, tears, and sweat. How sterile can such a mind be.

Forget the gimmick, but discuss how the moral of the story applies to the current situation or its near futu

Some good points in the linked piece. But I notice that nowhere was it mentioned that it is routine and standard to place a slab of cement or whatever as a payload on the first test of any rocket, let alone the biggest successful rocket since the Saturn 5. Have all those anxious cube-sat owners approached any other space hardware firms to let their little projects be potentially sacrificed in a big ball of fire and fury?

One thing that this very memorable stunt has done is that it has gotten a lot of people

Launching new missiles was NEVER (and still isn't) such a frequent event that anyone can claim that ANY part of the process is "routine" or "standard". On that basis I'm basically dismissing your comment as another religious rant. Elon Musk catches a lot of worship or envy, but I'm not into either. I also feel that I adequately addressed the slim substance of your comment in one (or probably more) of my earlier comments on this topic. If I took you more seriously, then I might dig around a bit for the link,

Right now I feel link-only responses should be ignored. If you have something to say, then say it and let us decide if you have actually said something that deserves to be supported with a click and a bit more time.

No, you did not. You simply give me a finger, and I'm not interested in following it without any hint where it points. From a naked link the "reader" cannot even infer your agreement or disagreement.

My initial reaction to the orbital car stunt was basically negative even before the innovation aspect was considered. While I wrote why I felt that way, that discussion is not part of this thread and your "contributions" so far don't justify any effort in digging up that link, but I do have another link handy, a

Except Blue Origin beat SpaceX to launch and landable re-useable rockets. SpaceX copied their landing solution. They've also never lost a rocket unlike SpaceX that loses one seemingly every other attempt. SpaceX has amazing marketing though.

What? Of the 18 SpaceX launches last year, 14 landed successfully and 4 landings weren't attempted because the mission profile didn't leave enough fuel for landing (though one of those four performed a successful high-thrust landing maneuver over open water). In other words, all the attempted landings succeeded.

You're comparing apples and oranges. The Falcon 9 is big and has 1.5 million pounds of thrust because it's hauling pretty heavy payloads to orbit. The Blue Origin New Shepard is much smaller and has

In their never ending quest to invade your privacy, store your data, and profit at your expense, they're each equally innovative in their own ways.

In that regard, Facebook is, by far, the most innovative. People voluntarily add all kinds of personal information. Many are even "addicted" to adding every little detail about their life on a continuous basis.

In their never ending quest to invade your privacy, store your data, and profit at your expense, they're each equally innovative in their own ways.

In that regard, Facebook is, by far, the most innovative. People voluntarily add all kinds of personal information. Many are even "addicted" to adding every little detail about their life on a continuous basis.

Why "No comment history available" when I click for your [TheGrimReefer's] mod points on that reply? I think you deserve a few, but it shows as a "Score:1" reply and clicking on it is futile. Moot to me, of course, since it appears I'll never see another mod point to give.

Then again, I think both of you [Subm and TheGrimReefer] are misusing "innovative" in your respective comments. How about "diabolical" or "cunning" for how Facebook works to consume (and mostly waste) our time and attention?

Nobody "invaded" anything. You opened the door and every filing cabinet in the house and installed their cameras and microphones (yes, they are recording your farts while you're on the pot reading the news on your iPod in the morning... And believe me! your wife is much louder.. and it's a girl, due in late October, everything looks healthy), and you gave them a letter opener to read your mail. Nothing was taken without your' full consent. So, stop with the whining already!

- Clean web page (remember what Altavista was when Google started?)- They started working with self driving car when it was still used as an example of things that computers can't do.- They created AI that beats best humans in Go a decade ahead of its time and are working to invent general AI. I would also like to add Tensorflow because it really changed how AI apps are made.- Google glass- Android (the OS), many tried to do it, but only Google succeeded.- Cluster or Linux servers instead of expensive

I'm down with Google. I went to the same HS as Sergei Brin. But out of all the companies on the list, they're the only ones who have made actual progress on all of the things I've ever wanted as a kid...

* Google maps: so I wouldn't have to carry around my laptop plugged into a GPS and loaded with all of the Garmin base maps to see what body of water I was driving next to. I used to love exploring and biking / driving out to the middle of nowhere with or without maps. The first google maps app on my old

Hmm... This poll seems to be a spinoff of the recent story about hiring for innovation (https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/02/10/2114218/why-hiring-the-best-people-produces-the-least-creative-results), so I guess I'll review and expand a bit on my main comment there (https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11729749&cid=56102435).

However, before I really start let me say that it's kind of sad IBM couldn't even get a nomination notwithstanding the company's long-term leadership in sheer numbers of patents. I'm counting that as evidence of the perversion of the fundamental ideas behind patents and copyrights, which were originally intended to encourage innovation, NOT just increase profit.

I nearly did accept the google as the most innovative for the paradigm shift to search over memorization. In epistemological terms, there are various ways of knowing things. One is to carry the knowledge in your own head, but the other is to know where to find the answers, and these days most of us pick Door #2 most of the time. (No nomination for Wikepedia?) However "search" isn't really a new idea, but just one that the google has improved a lot. The real innovator along those lines is probably the first librarian at Alexandria?

Enough with the appetizers. Time for the main course: Real innovation involves breaking the old box, replacing the way we think about things. This is called paradigm shift, and I strongly recommend The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a starting point. (Anyone know better and newer sources? The google should have a forward search feature.) My favorite example (for the elevator explanation) is the shift from Newton's physics to Einstein's. Newtonian physics still works quite well for most of what we do, but the deeper reality turned out to be different and it was an enormous innovation to switch paradigms there.

In the context of the poll, NONE of those companies are really doing much to change anything important because they all worship at the temple of corporate cancerism. Capitalism is as dead or deader than communism now. "There is no Gawd but Profit, and Apple is Gawd's #1 prophet!" Just the latest results, of course, but profit maximization is a problem with NO solution. There is no biggest profit to satisfy that endless loop. Of course it's impossible to predict or control REAL innovation, but competition is the best driver we know of. That means REAL competition without industry domination, and ALL of the candidate companies are dominators. (Mostly just my personal preference to favor evolutionary competition over revolutionary.)

However, before I really start let me say that it's kind of sad IBM couldn't even get a nomination notwithstanding the company's long-term leadership in sheer numbers of patents. I'm counting that as evidence of the perversion of the fundamental ideas behind patents and copyrights, which were originally intended to encourage innovation, NOT just increase profit.

Perhaps it is that many people feel that patents have been misused very counter-innovatively over the years. IBM being a big corporation through the 1950s and perhaps still based there may have followed the trend. What trend some may wonder...

Step1. Find an idea.
Step2. Patent it. You may need to buy a company but ideally don't give inventor any money, Sue them if necessary.
Step 3. Bury it. You have the IP. Bury the inventor too, if you can.

I think you [Gonoff] are actually focusing on a slightly different problem. I would describe it as the hollowing out of research by the big companies. The bean counters have figured out that real research is expensive and the RoI is shaky. Much better to let lots of small suckers do the real research and buy out the winners.

The brave and innovative losers who couldn't quite get the wrinkles out? The other guys and gals who didn't work quite hard enough or whose timing was off or unlucky? Thanks for playing,

Nothing against the suggested ones, but I feel like there are some good other options that deserve at least a mention:
* Boston Dynamics
* Netflix
* Redhat
* AMD
* Intel
* Uber

I'm not saying I approve of everything they have done, but if we're talking about innovation, they shouldn't be overlooked. The thing to remember though, people in authority may make bad decisions but a company is made up of many people and many teams. What they might do wrong based on a few executive decisions shouldn't make us ignore the many contributions of the many people who make the company successful.

And before they had the telephone and taxi, they had the telephone and horse. And before they had the telephone and horse, they had the telegraph and horse. And before they had the telegraph and horse, they had the pigeon and horse. I guess none of those are innovations. I mean really, when Og grunted at Ug to bring wheel thing, that might have counted as innovation, but surely nothing since.

The only real innovations were the lever, wheel, and fire. Everything since is just modifying somebody else's idea. W

They completely changed their business model from disks to streaming (with a few hiccups along the way - but they got it done!) and now they're doing it again with going from licensed content to original content.

Along the way they've also been innovative in delivering better and better image / sound quality. They were one of the first with 4k and HDR and they even have some movies that are streaming in Dolby Atmos now (although only when view

that developed FM radio, penecilin, nylon but it took a world war to scale these up to wide spread use. Yes, there were lots of weapons as well. but I use these as examples of innovative stuff which private companies would probably have restricted to minimal distribution to keep their profits high if not for WWII.

With the question about innovation, I think that this is what Apple and Tesla/Space X are very good at. Yes, the product/service categories did exist already but these companies with a great focus on detail shaped them in a way that has (or will be for Space X) become the modern standard.
When it comes to invention, Google is great at it, I remember when their search engine was launched, that was not just innovation, it worked on different principles from the altavistas of the day. And they have other produ

They are probably the best marketing company in the world right now. They take other people's ideas, make minor changes, and market them to the masses as innovative and elite. They haven't really been innovative for a long time. Tablets had been done before, mp3 players had been done, smartphones had been done, etc... But Apple could make a shit sandwich seem popular and necessary to people with too much disposable income. Also, their tech is usually at least a generation behind others lately. Just my persp

Google not for its online marketing driven business but for their continued success in scaling network structures and the intergration of ever more sophisticated quantum computing nodes which is also heavily contested with IBM. The Intel neural on chipset is also not to be overlooked and the expert Watson systems will intergrate effectively for inhouse setups and edge computing such as driverless cars and IoT sensory structures. Netflix and the infrastructure build function into actual nation state design a

Again, I think that the development projects associated with Linus hit their peak (along with Google) a few years ago. All of his big projects are still getting updated, but his team hasn't really innovated anything groundbreaking since Git was released in 2005.

Hey... I hope that he proves me wrong, and releases some amazing new technology tomorrow.